Alderan's Destruction, Divergant thread of the Tech debate.

Stewart at SDI

The main part of this debate must function on two seperate but linked points.

First. If two different but both "Cannon" sources give data that is obviously contradictory, Which do you use? The movie or the book?

Second. How do we resolve "Suspension of Disbelife" dilemma's? Such as if two different explinations of one thing are both impossable, but require different levels of SoD to explain the effects seen in the movie or writen about in a book.

After we decide what rules to use for the two questions above, we can continue.

Sincerely, Stewart.

Stewart at SDI · **Post subject:** Help required? **Posted:** 2004-02-10 06:39pm

How do I "quote" from some other post so that it shows up in a blue box in my reply?

Is it possable to quote from more than one reply in my single post? If so how?

I have tried to go back to prior posts to make sure that I answer all of the questions raised, but it erases my reply when I try to get back to my typing.

I would greatly appreciate anyones help in this.

Sincerely, Stewart.

HRogge · **Joined:** 2002-07-14 11:34am **Posts:** 1190

Stewart at SDI wrote:

First. If two different but both "Cannon" sources give data that is obviously contradictory, Which do you use? The movie or the book?

The movie is the highest level of canon. It shows us that Alderaan is blown up very roughly... anything saying something contradicting is wrong.

Quote:

How do I "quote" from some other post so that it shows up in a blue box in my reply?

Is it possable to quote from more than one reply in my single post? If so how?

I have tried to go back to prior posts to make sure that I answer all of the questions raised, but it erases my reply when I try to get back to my typing.

I would greatly appreciate anyones help in this.

Sincerely, Stewart.

You can cut&paste text into the box where you are writing your response. And try the link "BBCode" on the "Reply screen".

Keevan_Colton · **Post subject:** **Posted:** 2004-02-10 06:43pm

See the button marked "Quote" up there you moron, you can use it to quote...185 IQ my arse.

Ted C · **Post subject:** Re: Help required? **Posted:** 2004-02-10 06:44pm

Stewart,

You should see a "Quote" button at the right side of the screen in the heading of each post. If you click that, you will go to the "Post Reply" screen with the text of the original message in quote tags at the top of the screen, much like the following...

[quote="author name"]text[/quote]

Master of Ossus

Stewart at SDI wrote:

The main part of this debate must function on two seperate but linked points.

First. If two different but both "Cannon" sources give data that is obviously contradictory, Which do you use? The movie or the book?

The movie. There's a tiered system of canon materials, beginning with the movies, which makes them the highest and completely inviolate dictators of what is the true SW universe. They can override ANY other source, from the comics and the games right on up the scripts and the novelizations.

Quote:

Second. How do we resolve "Suspension of Disbelife" dilemma's? Such as if two different explinations of one thing are both impossable, but require different levels of SoD to explain the effects seen in the movie or writen about in a book.

What do you mean? Suspension of disbelief does not have shades of gray. It's merely an "on-off" switch. Either you are suspending disbelief or you are not.

Quote:

After we decide what rules to use for the two questions above, we can continue.

Sincerely, Stewart.

I look forward to it.

Ted C

Stewart at SDI wrote:

First. If two different but both "Cannon" sources give data that is obviously contradictory, Which do you use? The movie or the book?

The answer to this is simple if the owner of the story has a policy on the matter, which Lucasfilm does. In the event of a conflict, the film version of any event is always the most accurate version. Lucasfilm's policy has been well publicized, and Mike has an extensive discussion of the subject on the main site.

Stewart at SDI wrote:

Second. How do we resolve "Suspension of Disbelife" dilemma's? Such as if two different explinations of one thing are both impossable, but require different levels of SoD to explain the effects seen in the movie or writen about in a book.

You don't seem to understand the concept of suspension of disbelief. If you suspend disbelief, then you assume that the events depicted on the screen actually happened, and that you are viewing some kind of documentary footage of those events. Consequently, any event you see on the screen is assumed to be possible.

If you have conflicting explanations of an event depicted on screen, then you should choose the explanation that is the most consistent with known science. This method requires the least invention of "technobabble" principles to explain what occurred.

Stewart at SDI

The question means if two different mechanisms can explain one thing but one requires more SoD than the other, how do you choose which one to use?

Quote:

What do you mean? Suspension of disbelief does not have shades of gray. It's merely an "on-off" switch. Either you are suspending disbelief or you are not.

If this does not work, I would like a more detailed set of instructions to follow for the quoting proccess.

Sincerely, Stewart. [/quote]

I look forward to it.[/quote]

SirNitram

Stewart at SDI wrote:

The question means if two different mechanisms can explain one thing but one requires more SoD than the other, how do you choose which one to use?

Same as any position in real science: You use Parsimony.

Tribun · **Post subject:** **Posted:** 2004-02-10 07:01pm

Do you guy fear too, that is is slinding into DarkStar's superlaser effect theory?

SirNitram · **Post subject:** **Posted:** 2004-02-10 07:03pm

Tribun wrote:

Do you guy fear too, that is is slinding into DarkStar's superlaser effect theory?

We're still in Stilgar's territory. Next, I suspect we will see him state that Fusion will do it, at which point we will point out insufficient hydrogen is present in the Earth, and acheiving the necessary pressure/heat would far exceed DET. We won't hit the 'magic beam that converts the planet to Antimatter' for a while yet, so I don't need to actually run the numbers that prove that, too, would yield much higher than 1e39J.

The Kernel

Stewart at SDI wrote:

If this does not work, I would like a more detailed set of instructions to follow for the quoting proccess.

The main Stardestroyer.Net page has two essays (click the Essays tab) that discuss canon and Sci-Fi debating (which talks about suspension of disbelief. They are extremely good reads and I suggest you look at them before you respond to Mike's inevitable response.

Ted C · **Post subject:** **Posted:** 2004-02-10 07:07pm

Stewart,

When quoting, you should use the following format...

[quote="Name of person being quoted"]Copy of the person's statement[/quote]

Or just the following...

[quote]copied text[/quote]

Either way, you need to make sure that you have both an "opening" tag -- [quote] -- and a "closing" tag -- [/quote].

Do not put your own statements between tags. Make sure you don't have any stray tags, since tags that are not part of a matched pair will actually be visible in your post.

Stewart at SDI

The arguments posted here and other plases cite several figures for the energy required to blast the planet apart. At least one is based on the asumption that the fragments are moving at some large fraction of C. I must assume that the source for this is one of the books because one of the other posters claimed it was Cannon.

This assumption that the fragments are moving at any apreaciatable fraction of the speed of light is clearly in opposition to the event protraid in the movie. For all we know the fragments might not even have "escape velocity"! Thus the calculations of the energy required are plainly flawed.

Carefull fraim by fraim measurements of the speed of the fastest fragments moving perpendicular to the line of sight indicates a velosity of only 1.385 planetary diamiters per second. That a later book claims a vastly diferent figure, one and a half orders of magnatude higher, brings us to the dilemma. If the fastest fragments are traveling less than 12,000 Km/S and the slowest are going one onehundredth of that speed, what is the total energy? Clearly it is not any were neer what is claimed elsewere on this site.

Irregardless of the mass of the planet, dealing only with the part of the equasion that comes from the velosity of the mass, the differance between the two figures can be easily calculated.

((12,000*12,000=144,000,000)+(1,200*1,200=1,440,000))/2=72,720,000 As calculated from the direct evidence of the film, yealds a velocity factor just under 73 million.

150,000*150,000=2.25^10 or 22,500,000,000 as stated in a book. the differance between the two figures is 309.4.

Therefore, given any figure of mass the two answers for total energy will dissagree by over 300 times.

Since the movie cuts away before we get to see the entire event, we have to assume the total velocity factor. However, when Solo arives, there are pieces of planet moving at very low velocities, on the order of M/S. Not tens of M/S, but surely less and posably at fractions of M/S. Using this figure as the lower boundary in the velocity equasion above, the differance factor becomes 625!

If the Falcon has any residual speed after comming out of hyperspace, the fragments must be moving parrallel to his course but slower than it is moving. That would imply that at least some of the fragments did not have sufficiant velocity to escape the gravity well of the total mass. Since the Falcon appiers to be moving when it comes out into the metior storm, this is the most likely scenario. That means that the "corect" answer must lie someplace between the two factors computed above.

My "POCKET REF" by Thomas J. Glover states the mass of the Earth as 1.317^25 pounds or by my calculator 6^21 metric tons in nice round numbers. If Alderan were approximately the same mass as Earth, then the total energy would be about 4.32^32th or about seven orders of magnatude less than that cited in the book. IIRC The variables cited above could lower this figure by a factor less than ten but no more in my oppinion. Still a prodigious amount of energy.

The above is not realivant to our discussion because SoD requires that the planet explode and so it must. We are just arguing on the total power needed to do the job. All of the above figures are approximate, since TV does not have sufficiant resolution to get closer than this.

Disagrements? Sincerely, Stewart.

Tribun · **Post subject:** **Posted:** 2004-02-10 08:08pm

Quote:

Since the movie cuts away before we get to see the entire event, we have to assume the total velocity factor.

Oh right.
The only thing cut away was the debris field, after the explosion was almost over anyway, as you can see in this picture from Mike, which shows the last frame of the scene.

Darth Wong

Stewart at SDI wrote:

The arguments posted here and other plases cite several figures for the energy required to blast the planet apart. At least one is based on the asumption that the fragments are moving at some large fraction of C. I must assume that the source for this is one of the books because one of the other posters claimed it was Cannon.

That is an observation, not an assumption.

Quote:

This assumption that the fragments are moving at any apreaciatable fraction of the speed of light is clearly in opposition to the event protraid in the movie. For all we know the fragments might not even have "escape velocity"! Thus the calculations of the energy required are plainly flawed.

Carefull fraim by fraim measurements of the speed of the fastest fragments moving perpendicular to the line of sight indicates a velosity of only 1.385 planetary diamiters per second.

1.385 planetary diameters per second is more than 17000 km/s, which is more than 5% of c, fool. Can't you operate a fucking calculator?

Quote:

That a later book claims a vastly diferent figure, one and a half orders of magnatude higher, brings us to the dilemma. If the fastest fragments are traveling less than 12,000 Km/S and the slowest are going one onehundredth of that speed, what is the total energy? Clearly it is not any were neer what is claimed elsewere on this site.

Irregardless of the mass of the planet, dealing only with the part of the equasion that comes from the velosity of the mass, the differance between the two figures can be easily calculated.

((12,000*12,000=144,000,000)+(1,200*1,200=1,440,000))/2=72,720,000 As calculated from the direct evidence of the film, yealds a velocity factor just under 73 million.

150,000*150,000=2.25^10 or 22,500,000,000 as stated in a book. the differance between the two figures is 309.4.

Therefore, given any figure of mass the two answers for total energy will dissagree by over 300 times.

What book are you talking about? I refuse to believe that anyone with a genuine technical background would be so sloppy as to reference unnamed sources as regularly as you do.

Quote:

Since the movie cuts away before we get to see the entire event, we have to assume the total velocity factor. However, when Solo arives, there are pieces of planet moving at very low velocities, on the order of M/S. Not tens of M/S, but surely less and posably at fractions of M/S. Using this figure as the lower boundary in the velocity equasion above, the differance factor becomes 625!

Except that he sees nothing but black space behind those fragments. If the majority of the planet's mass was still in place, he would see an expanding planet, not a few rocks in empty space. There was so little remaining mass that he thought he was in the wrong place, fool.

Quote:

If the Falcon has any residual speed after comming out of hyperspace, the fragments must be moving parrallel to his course but slower than it is moving. That would imply that at least some of the fragments did not have sufficiant velocity to escape the gravity well of the total mass. Since the Falcon appiers to be moving when it comes out into the metior storm, this is the most likely scenario. That means that the "corect" answer must lie someplace between the two factors computed above.

More bullshit. Entropic particle collisions in a chaotic debris field can easily fling material back toward the original location. The fact that there was so little of this material indicates that the vast majority of the planet is, in fact, nowhere to be seen.

Quote:

My "POCKET REF" by Thomas J. Glover states the mass of the Earth as 1.317^25 pounds or by my calculator 6^21 metric tons in nice round numbers. If Alderan were approximately the same mass as Earth, then the total energy would be about 4.32^32th or about seven orders of magnatude less than that cited in the book. IIRC The variables cited above could lower this figure by a factor less than ten but no more in my oppinion. Still a prodigious amount of energy.

For the second time, what book? I have never seen this book you speak of, and your failure to name it does not build confidence.

Quote:

The above is not realivant to our discussion because SoD requires that the planet explode and so it must. We are just arguing on the total power needed to do the job. All of the above figures are approximate, since TV does not have sufficiant resolution to get closer than this.

Disagrements? Sincerely, Stewart.

Read this before you waste any more of our time with your dishonest and ignorant bleatings.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tec ... eraan.html

Sarevok · **Post subject:** **Posted:** 2004-02-11 04:35am

Quote:

This assumption that the fragments are moving at any apreaciatable fraction of the speed of light is clearly in opposition to the event protraid in the movie. For all we know the fragments might not even have "escape velocity"! Thus the calculations of the energy required are plainly flawed.

Careful calculations made by educated people suggests you are wrong.

HRogge · **Joined:** 2002-07-14 11:34am **Posts:** 1190

Stewart at SDI wrote:

Carefull fraim by fraim measurements of the speed of the fastest fragments moving perpendicular to the line of sight indicates a velosity of only 1.385 planetary diamiters per second.

Earth diameter: ~ 12000 km
1.385 planetary diameters: 12000*1.385 = 16620 km

Quote:

That a later book claims a vastly diferent figure, one and a half orders of magnatude higher, brings us to the dilemma. If the fastest fragments are traveling less than 12,000 Km/S and the slowest are going one onehundredth of that speed, what is the total energy? Clearly it is not any were neer what is claimed elsewere on this site.

5% c = 300000 / 100 * 5 km/s = 15000 km/s
That's less than your 1.385 planetary diameters per second !

Quote:

My "POCKET REF" by Thomas J. Glover states the mass of the Earth as 1.317^25 pounds or by my calculator 6^21 metric tons in nice round numbers. If Alderan were approximately the same mass as Earth, then the total energy would be about 4.32^32th or about seven orders of magnatude less than that cited in the book. IIRC The variables cited above could lower this figure by a factor less than ten but no more in my oppinion. Still a prodigious amount of energy.

At least you are not propagating this funny/stupid "fusion/fission-bomb planet" theory... this theory is so horrible stupid that's even hard to laugh about.

I take the last figure that you agree that the absolute minimum of the DS1 must be the grav. binding energy of the planet... I don't know what's wrong with you pocket calculator, but others in this thread have already proven your "good limit" of 4E32 joule wrong...

Patrick Degan · **Post subject:** **Posted:** 2004-02-11 11:36am

If this clown Stewart really is connected with the Strategic Defence Initiative, we have one reason at least why the project's gotten nowhere.

Stewart at SDI · **Post subject:** Energy efficiancy question? **Posted:** 2004-02-25 08:34pm

What is the efficiancy of the mechanism that generates, controles and directs the energy required to destroy the planet? IE, what pecentage of the energy generated was absorbed by the machine that did it?

Darth Wong · **Post subject:** Re: Energy efficiancy question? **Posted:** 2004-02-25 08:40pm

Stewart at SDI wrote:

What is the efficiancy of the mechanism that generates, controles and directs the energy required to destroy the planet? IE, what pecentage of the energy generated was absorbed by the machine that did it?

Something much smaller than the billions of percent efficiencies required for your alternate theory.

Patrick Degan · **Post subject:** **Posted:** 2004-02-25 08:42pm

Stewart at SDI wrote:

What is the efficiancy of the mechanism that generates, controles and directs the energy required to destroy the planet? IE, what pecentage of the energy generated was absorbed by the machine that did it?

Irrelevant, incompetent, and immaterial so far as the observed effects of the superlaser are concerned. The weapon delivered sufficent energy to blow a terrestrial planet apart in a tenth of a second.

Durandal · **Post subject:** **Posted:** 2004-02-25 11:01pm

Stewart at SDI wrote:

If the Falcon has any residual speed after comming out of hyperspace, the fragments must be moving parrallel to his course but slower than it is moving. That would imply that at least some of the fragments did not have sufficiant velocity to escape the gravity well of the total mass.

You assume that the Falcon came out of hyperspace where the center of Alderaan's mass was projected to be. I don't need to explain why this is stupid.

Furthermore, assuming that Alderaan was Earth-like, the fastest any particle would need to go to clear the planet's potential well is 11.2 km/s. If a significant portion of the planet's mass was moving that slowly, we'd have observed a large concentration of mass remaining after the explosion. Since the entire space taken up by the planet was cleared, we can safely conclude that you're wrong.

Kamakazie Sith · **Post subject:** **Posted:** 2004-02-25 11:05pm

Durandal wrote:

Stewart at SDI wrote:

If the Falcon has any residual speed after comming out of hyperspace, the fragments must be moving parrallel to his course but slower than it is moving. That would imply that at least some of the fragments did not have sufficiant velocity to escape the gravity well of the total mass.

You assume that the Falcon came out of hyperspace where the center of Alderaan's mass was projected to be. I don't need to explain why this is stupid.

I have a gut feeling that you might actually need to explain.

Spanky The Dolphin · **Post subject:** **Posted:** 2004-02-26 05:24am

If he has to, I might be forced to track Stewart down and snuff him...

Alderan's Destruction, Divergant thread of the Tech debate.

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